Awards are stupid, but we need awards. In the United States, awards are such a prominent aspect of sports culture that we've reached the point where we're now arguing over semantics. With the Most Valuable Player (MVP) Award given in all the major sports, there's no real agreed-upon definition. Does it go to the most important player? The most outstanding? The best? Of course, it says "valuable" in the name, but what even is value? Are we talking value provided on the court? In the locker room? To the franchise's overall open-market valuation?
Like I said, it's dumb, but it's important. Awards voting serves as a historical record. Look at the top 10 in MVP voting in any given season in any given sport and you'll have a pretty good sense of who the most important players were that year. The order of those players often won't make a ton of sense, but the group of players usually serves as an accurate cast of key characters. Same goes for the All-NBA teams and the NFL's All-Pro teams.
In soccer, we've got the Ballon d'Or, yes. But that is riddled with inconsistencies and the voting population isn't the most scrupulous. So many votes come down to a single game or two; people are swayed by rivalries, or the one time they saw that one player shine. Beyond the Ballon d'Or, most leagues have their Player of the Year (POTY) awards, but the processes are opaque and like in the Premier League, there's not a unanimously recognized single POTY award. In fact, there are more than one: Premier League POTY, Professional Football Association (PFA) Players' POTY, Football Writers' Association (FWA) POTY, PFA Fans' POTY.
Plus, these things are all skewed toward attackers and they don't have much of a place in the culture of the sport. Did you know that Antoine Griezmann and Cristiano Ronaldo have the same number of Spanish LaLiga Player of the Year wins? Didn't think so. They each have one; Lionel Messi has nine.
- O'Hanlon: Why trades don't happen in soccer
However, there's a group of 14 European sports magazines -- two from both Germany and the Netherlands, plus one each from England, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Russia, Belgium, Denmark, France, Hungary and Italy -- that have been maintaining a consistent process that produces an American-sports style historical record.
Every month, the members of European Sports Media (ESM) vote on a best XI across the continent, and after each season, they add up the number of appearances in Team of the Month to determine the Team of the Year. This website contains ESM data going all the way back to the 1995-96 season. So, what can it tell us?
The Messi-Ronaldo era is officially over
Messi has made the ESM Team of the Month 84 separate times, and the Team of the Year in 14 different seasons -- both of which are way more than anyone else. In second, for both, is Ronaldo, with 51 appearances and nine Team of the Year spots. No one else has made more than 34 appearances. If you can extricate yourself from the never-ending arguments between people with CR7 in their Twitter handles or pictures of Messi holding a baby goat as their avatar, those numbers paint a pretty good picture of the era we just lived through. Messi is the most dominant and consistent player of the past 30 years -- and no one else is close. Ronaldo is the second-most dominant and consistent player of the past 30 years -- and no one else is close.
In each of the previous 16 seasons, either Messi (14) or Ronaldo (9) has made the ESM Team of the Year. And then, this year happened. Neither Messi nor Ronaldo even made a single Team of the Month appearance.
The attackers who did:
- Karim Benzema (Real Madrid): 6
- Robert Lewandowski (Bayern Munich): 6
- Mohamed Salah (Liverpool): 5
- Vinicius Junior (Real Madrid): 4
- Kylian Mbappe (Paris Saint-Germain): 2
- Dusan Vlahovic (Juventus): 1
- Erling Haaland (Borussia Dortmund): 1
- Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (Barcelona): 1
- Rafael Leao (AC Milan): 1
- Sadio Mane (Liverpool): 1
The three attackers who made the 2021-22 Team of the Year were Benzema, Lewandowski and Salah. You can't really argue about that, can you? Though someone will find a way...
To put a slightly finer point on it, the last time the ESM Team of the Year didn't feature either Messi or Ronaldo was in 2004-05. The team:
- GK: Petr Cech (Chelsea)
- DEF: Fabio Cannavaro (Juventus), Carles Puyol (Barcelona), John Terry (Chelsea)
- MID: Frank Lampard (Chelsea), Mark van Bommel (PSV), Deco (Barcelona), Ronaldinho (Barcelona)
- FW: Arjen Robben (Chelsea), Samuel Eto'o (Barcelona), Andriy Shevchenko (AC Milan)
Most of those guys are now managers, or coaches, or middling football executives. Ronaldinho recently spent time in a Paraguayan prison, where he won a suckling pig in a small-sided soccer tournament. Anyone else's back just seize up? No? Just me?
Is Kevin De Bruyne the best midfielder of the modern era?
The Manchester City midfielder has made ESM's Team of the Month 24 times. That's more than all but five other players: Messi, Ronaldo, Roberto Carlos (34), Dani Alves (31) and Sergio Ramos (26). This past season, De Bruyne made five appearances -- more than any other midfielder. The two other members of the Team of the Year's midfield were Real Madrid's Luka Modric (4) and De Bruyne's teammate at Man City, Bernardo Silva (3). And the only other midfielders to make more than one appearance were Barcelona's Pedri and Liverpool's Thiago Alcantara.
Among the many things you might have noticed about the list of players with more appearances than KDB: none of them are midfielders.
The five most selected midfielders after De Bruyne are:
- Xavi (Barcelona): 24
- Zinedine Zidane (Juventus/Real Madrid): 23
- Frank Lampard (Chelsea): 18
- Andres Iniesta (Barcelona): 18
- David Beckham (Man United, Real Madrid, AC Milan): 14
It might seem absurd to lump KDB in with some of those names -- and especially to put him ahead of them -- but I think these lists, in particular, do a really nice job of awarding a player for consistent excellence.
Rather than just looking at a player's performance after the season ends, which invariably leads evaluators to overweight what happened in big games and matches toward the end of the season, this process rewards you just as much for playing well in September as in April. And, well, except for the one year he was hurt, De Bruyne has been a comprehensively dominant player in each of the past eight seasons. In seven of those eight, he has averaged at least 0.70 non-penalty goals+assists per 90 minutes -- elite attacking production despite playing in the midfield.
He still lacks a true signature moment in a major tournament -- and he has yet to win the Champions League -- but he's the best midfielder of his generation. And even that might be underselling just how good he is.
Joao Cancelo and Trent Alexander-Arnold are both better than you think
Even if you think you've found true solitude, in a remote, snowy forest accessible only by helicopter and toboggan, if you so much as dare whisper the letters "TAA," someone will still inevitably pop out from behind a tree and a scream: "BUT CAN HE DEFEND?" Yet while Alexander-Arnold's reputation remains complicated for some, the ESM list has a pretty clear opinion on the Liverpool full-back: he's one of the best players in the world.
TAA has already made 11 total appearances in the Team of the Month -- tied with the likes of Marcelo, Neymar and Kaka. Six of those appearances came this season, which earned him his second appearance in the Team of the Year. There are 52 players with more total appearances than Alexander-Arnold, but they were all born at least four years before he was. If he keeps up his current pace, he's going to end his career right around where Roberto Carlos and Dani Alves are.
The youngest player ahead of TAA on the list is Manchester City's Cancelo, who turned 28 in May. He has made 12 appearances in the Team of the Month and has made the Team of the Year for two campaigns running. In fact, this season he led all players in Team of the Month appearances with seven. He didn't make the team in September or October, but he then ran the table from November through May.
Since the '95-96 season, just 17 other times has a player made the Team of the Month at least seven times in a season:
- Messi (Barcelona): 6
- Ronaldo (Real Madrid): 2
And then nine other players did it once: Virgin van Dijk (Liverpool, 2018-19); Roberto Carlos (Real Madrid, 1997-98); Ronaldo (Barcelona, 1996-97); John Terry (Chelsea, 2004-05); Carles Puyol and Ronaldinho (Barcelona, 05-06); Rio Ferdinand (Manchester United, 2007-08); Nemanja Vidic (Manchester United, 2010-11); Kevin De Bruyne (Manchester City 2017-18.)
There are five instances of a player hitting eight of the nine months: Messi (2010-11, 2017-18, 2018-19), Ronaldo (2011-12), and Roberto Carlos (1997-98). And only twice has a player appeared in all nine teams of the month: Messi in 2011-12 and Van Dijk in 2018-19.
Van Dijk made the team again this year (four Team of the Month appearances); he has now made it in all three of his full seasons for Liverpool. What makes this kind of record-keeping particularly interesting is how it allows you to compare players across positions, across eras.
Van Dijk has 18 Team of the Month appearances, which ties him for 19th-most with Iniesta, Lampard and Shevchenko and puts him one behind Luis Suarez and the Brazilian Ronaldo. That's fun! Among center-backs, he's sixth -- after Terry, Gerard Pique and Puyol (22); Paolo Maldini (23); and Ramos (26).
The media love Thibaut Courtois
The other center-back in the 2021-22 Team of the Year was Chelsea's Antonio Rudiger, who made the first three Team of the Month appearances of his career. And behind him in the theoretical formation is his new Real Madrid teammate, goalkeeper Thibault Courtois, who did this in the Champions League final.
Thibaut Courtois. My word. #UCLFinal pic.twitter.com/7wAzKTrtRC
— The Analyst (@OptaAnalyst) May 28, 2022
After the game, Courtois said: "Today I needed to win a final for my career, for all the hard work, to put some respect on my name, because I don't think I get enough respect. Especially in England." He's not quite a Kevin Durant-level Twitter power-user, but Courtois will pretty much like any tweet that anyone sends out about how good he is at saving a soccer ball. And while he might be right about the English media, ESM loves the guy.
Courtois has made two Team of the Year appearances in his career -- this past season, plus 2013-14 with Atletico Madrid -- and he has appeared in the Team of the Month 16 times. The only goalkeeper with more appearances is Juventus legend Gianluigi Buffon (17), who has been playing professional soccer for over 25 years. Bayern's Manuel Neuer, meanwhile, is the only keeper with more Team of the Year appearances (3) than Courtois.
Perhaps the 30-year-old Belgium international doesn't get enough respect, but maybe he's just not looking for validation in the right places. The ESM list is far from perfect -- there should be a space carved out for defensive midfielders -- but it's better than anything else we have. It's time we all start using it.